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for class on Tuesday April 14, 1998
Please read Chapter 12 of the Schneider and Gersting text, and be prepared to discuss the following:
Today we will discuss Artificial Intelligence (AI): the attempt, in the short term, to program computers so that they exhibit "intelligent" behavior, and in the long term, to make machines that are as intelligent as people. Here are some quotes, including two from your text:
"Just as the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 were
on the right track to the 747, so too is AI, with its attempts to formalize
commonsense understanding, on its way to fully intelligent machines."
(Patrick Winston)
"The brain happens to be a meat machine."
(Marvin Minsky)
"Believing that writing these types of programs will bring
us closer to real artificial intelligence is like believing
that someone climbing a tree is making progress toward reaching the
moon."
(Hubert Dreyfus)
"Either artificial intelligence is possible...or we're not."
(Herbert Simon)
"There have been many debates on 'Computers and Mind.' What I conclude
here is that the relevant issues are neither technological nor
even mathematical; they are ethical. They cannot be settled by asking questions
beginning with 'Can.' The limits of the applicability of computers are
ultimately statable only in terms of oughts. What emerges as the most
elementary insight is that, since we do not now have any ways of
making computers wise, we ought not now give computers tasks that demand wisdom."
(Joseph Weizenbaum)
What are your views on this? Do you think that someday computers will be able to do all of the "intelligent" tasks that people can do?